Entities used for transporting goods or providing services, e.g. a delivery truck, autonomous vehicles, or a ride-share provider, often report their location to aid in scheduling, to track estimated arrival times, or to ensure custody of valuable cargo. An entity is a movable container or structure which includes a location-determining subsystem and a reporting subsystem for notifying an outside receiver the location data associated with that entity. An entity is either self-propelled, such as a vehicle, or transportable, such as a shipping container. In some embodiments, the location-determining subsystem is a GPS receiver.
Businesses perform location tracking to ensure that the entity is at a certain location at a certain time. Sometimes, interested third parties, such as customers awaiting delivery of their package, seek reliable estimated delivery times. For example, an armored car transporting cash reports their location frequently by transmitting global positioning system (GPS) data to a home office. In another example, a food delivery vehicle is monitored by a customer anxiously awaiting their meal delivery.
Occasionally, an entity sends inaccurate location data, deliberate or inadvertently, due to technical failure, a desire by the driver of the entity to appear on time/on schedule, or to confuse or thwart tracking efforts such as during the commission of a crime. A deliberate effort by either the operator of the entity or an unauthorized user to deceive tracking efforts is termed “spoofing”.
Spoofing is the act of disguising a communication from an unknown source as being from a known, trusted source. Location spoofing is the act of communicating location information of an entity to make the entity appear to be located at geographical location different than the entity's actual geographical location.